Katey Red: A Most Unlikely Star

By NEIL STRAUSS

NEW
ORLEANS --
OUTSIDE a concert by Katey
Red at the Factory, a teenage club in East New Orleans, fellow musicians are
raving. "A lot of things wouldn't be
going on in this town without her,"
said Mankind, a producer. "She's hot
right now."

A rapper known as Tiger added,
"She gets the crowd jumping."

The strange thing is that Katey
Red is not a she at all. Born Kenyon
Carter, Katey Red is one of the first
openly homosexual rap and bounce-music artists to earn respect in this
notoriously homophobic world. Add
to that Katey Red's chronic stutter,
and you have a most unlikely regional star, even in a city with a rich
culture of cross-dressing.

In the fast-dancing world of
bounce, cuts by Katey Red dominate,
with parties shaking to singles like
"Melpomene Block Party," which
makes explicit references to homosexuality and oral sex. At the Factory, his short, salacious performance had even gangsta-looking fans
in Fubu gear and bandannas careening through the club, either lifting up
their shirts or placing their fists under their shirts to imitate a breast-shaking dance. Katey Red's success
(the stutter mysteriously disappears
when he gets on the microphone) has
prompted even those who were skeptical at first to respect his wish to be
referred to as 'she."

"She's 6-2 and wears a size-14
shoe," said Earl Mackie, who signed
Katey Red to his label, Take Fo'
Records. "I always tell her, 'Man,
you could have been a basketball
star.' "

Standing with one of his female
dancers in the parking lot outside the
Factory, Katey Red recalled: "When
I first started rapping, I was scared.
I was worried somebody would come
up on the stage and stab me up. But
I'm not scared no more."

Katey Red first realized that he
wasn't like his friends at age 5, when
he put on his mother's fingernail
polish. "My mom, she gave me a
whupping and told me I'm not supposed to do that," he said. "Then,
while my cousins played football, I
started playing with baby dolls."

At 13, he first had sex with a girl.
"I didn't get nothing out of it," he
said. "I was always thinking about
boys. So I had sex with a man when I
was 15. Then, when I made 16, I had
sex with a girl again to make sure I
really didn't want it."

At parties, girlfriends continually
urged him to get on the microphone,
insisting that he had a knack for
heating up a room. At one of those
dances, he met a disc jockey who
worked for Take Fo' Records. "He
said, 'I'm going to put some money
on you because I know you can get
somewhere with your rap.' And I'm
like: 'Boy, why you want to sign a
homosexual rapper? That don't look
cute!' "

DJ Jubilee, one of bounce's biggest
stars, recalled that as soon as he
heard Katey Red's demo, he saw
gold. "I said, 'Look at how many
homosexuals are going to buy it. And
women are going to think she's a
woman, so they're going to buy it
too.' Everybody is going to be biting
her stuff. It's so good."

Many people say that one reason
Katey Red has succeeded where an
openly homosexual gangsta rapper
might not is because in the world of
bounce, women tend to control the
market.

"The guys come by because they
want to see the girls bend over and
shake their behinds," Katey Red
said. "And the girls come by just so
they can shake their behinds. So as
long as the girls are shaking, the
boys are going to be buying. The boys
will be in a car and passing a bunch
of girls on the corner, and they'll be
playing my song and the girls will
turn toward them and bend over and
start dancing."

Mr. Mackie said that the only problem the label has encountered so far
is that outside New Orleans, "D.J.'s
refused to play her single because
they thought that people were going
to think that they were gay for playing it."

Last week, Katey Red released his
first full-length album, "Y2Katey."
In the coming months, he plans to
move out of the home of his mother
(who still insists on calling him by
his birth name) and to begin female
hormone treatments. "I'm the first
homosexual rapper, and when I'm
out in the public I have to make sure
I look good," he explained emphatically. "I have to make sure I have no
hair on my face, I have to have my
hair fixed, and I have to be presentable and not looking like a man. And
I'm going to take care of all
that."